Up or down at Dropbox? It's hard to say

San Francisco

THERE are no obvious signs of distress at the lavish San Francisco headquarters of the cloud storage company Dropbox, where on any given day, its hallways bustle with upbeat, well-compensated tech workers enjoying the customary trappings of startup life. Dropbox is not laying off workers or shrinking; it hired nearly 500 people last year, 75 since the start of this year, and it plans to soon move into a sprawling, custom-designed office building for which it has signed a long-term lease.

But that isn't the image of Dropbox you'd encounter in the news media. Two years ago, the company raised a round of financing that valued it at US$10 billion, making it one of the most highly prized startups of the tech boom. Now it faces a stock market that has turned unfriendly to …